Al Qaeda's Nightmarish Dreamworld

Befitting a man who has used 21st-century technology in the name of the most regressive form of Islam, Osama bin Laden was captured on videotape recently describing dreams he believes foretold the ``success'' of his holy warriors.

The demagogue who apparently orchestrated the deadliest terror attack in American history sat peacefully with a few associates on that November day recounting his acolytes' sleep-induced visions.

```I saw in a dream,''' bin Laden said according to a translation, recalling the words of one co-conspirator, ```we were playing a soccer game against the Americans. When our team showed up in the field, they were all pilots!' He said: `So I wondered if that was a soccer game or a pilot game? Our players were pilots.' He didn't know anything about the operation until he heard it on the radio. He said the game went on, and we defeated them. That was a good omen for us.''

Later, he tells a similar story: ``We were at a camp of one of the brother's guards in Kandahar. This brother belonged to the majority of the group. He came close and told me that he saw, in a dream, a tall building in America, and in the same dream he saw Mukhtar teaching them how to play karate. At that point, I was worried that maybe the secret would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dream. So I closed the subject. I told him if he sees another dream, not to tell anybody.''

Dreams mean different things to different people in different cultures, but these seemed of particular importance to the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network and his followers. ``Just like we have dreams that we dismiss as weird and dreams that stick with us because we believe intuitively that they `mean something,' Osama bin Laden and his crowd have dreams that they attach particular significance to as well,'' said David C. Lohff, the author of books on dream analysis.

``I think the issue there is more a matter of how any individual's waking-life concerns are related to their dream material. That is to say that if, in waking life, you're angry all the time because you feel the great Satan of the West is oppressing your religion and way of life, any dream that corresponds to or illuminates that perceived reality will have greater meaning for you than someone who doesn't share that conviction.''

But religious zealots like bin Laden are not alone in assigning great importance to dreams.

``The fact that so many American newspapers and magazines have astrology columns, or that so many Americans are devotees of quack New Age medical cures such as crystals, shows how gullible and superstitious we are ourselves,'' said Gideon Rose, a terrorism expert with the Council on Foreign Relations and co-editor of the new book ``How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War.''

``There is a long history in Western culture of people using dreams and other phenomena -- from chicken entrails to unusual weather -- as signs or portents of future events. Shakespeare alone could furnish a book's worth of examples.''

Bin Laden is said by some to be as savvy as he is evil, so could he be fabricating stories about dreams in the name of furthering his cause? He would not be the first leader to do so, notes Gayle M. V. Delaney, the author of books on dreaming.

``Constantine, Hannibal, Alexander the Great and others told of dreams that may have been inventions for political ends,'' Delaney said.

But if they are to be believed, the dreams that filled the heads of bin Laden's sycophants show that, in certain small ways, they may be more like us than we'd like to imagine.

Said Rose, ``The dream references in the video just show that Osama bin Laden and his followers are as superstitious and gullible as we used to be -- or in many cases still are.''